The spirit of Egypt

I found it really interesting to learn today that there is something called “The Spirit of Egypt” (kind of sounds like an Egyptian patriotic song), that is actually representative of bondage. The name Egypt in Hebrew actually means “the one who that is sent to oppress you and torment you the limited place or besieged place”

The root to this name is צר (tsar Strong's #6862) meaning "pressed in" and can be translated several different ways; "enemy" as one who presses in; "trouble" as a pressing in; "strait" as a canyon with the walls pressing. A common method of forming nouns is to add the letter "mem" to the front of a root. In this case the "mem" is placed before the root forming the noun מצר (metsar Strong's #4712). The prefixed "mem" can be understood as "what is...", hence metsar means "what is pressed in" and is usually translated as trouble or straits. The suffix of the name mitsrayim is the masculine plural suffix ים. The normal pronunciation for this suffix is "eeym", usually a multiple plural, but can also be "yeem" and is the double plural as in the name mitsrayim.

In Sunday school, we used to do a thing where when we told a story there would be a key word, and as we said the word… the kids would respond by repeating it or doing something. So as you read, every time you see Egypt think “the one who that is sent to oppress you and torment you the limited place or besieged place” (or just oppression and torment).

So a few weeks back, people where talking about the “spirit of Egypt” being broken… and we all know that it since has been with the resignation of Mubarak. This is a new threat on a different level, but that will be a different blog post… anyway, this “spirit of Egypt” is all throughout the Old Testament, specifically in the story of Joseph.

The story is a familiar one to most but to sum it up:

Joseph was the 11^th son of Jacob, and when he was young, he knew that God had a very important plan for his life. He told his brothers this, and they detested it and later sold him into slavery and he was taken to the land of Egypt (oppression and torment). In Egypt, he faced Egypt (ok I’ll stop having so much fun with the words).  Because the Lord’s favor was on him, he rose up in the slave world and became the overseer of his master’s affairs. So then, in Genesis 39:9, we see the “spirit of Egypt” again as his master’s wife tries to seduce Joseph day after day (torment). And it only gets worse from here. Joseph gets falsely accused of committing a horrible sin for “going after” his master’s wife, and is thrown in jail. Then we see that the favor of God is still with Joseph in prison, and he starts to interpret the prison guard’s dreams, and then rises up, this time in the prison world, and ends up interpreting the Pharaoh’s dreams.  

While the story goes on, for time sake I’ll stop here. From the story of Joseph in Egypt we can get a clear understanding of this spirit of Egypt and what it means in terms of bondage, but one of the most significant elements is that it stopped Joseph from dreaming. Often times today, we see people who are stuck in poverty, or bad circumstances and they’ve lost all hope for better days. And I believe that God wants to break this spirit of Egypt, in so many lives, so that His people can dream again. Without dreams and hope for better days, it’s hard to serve God.

For a while I’ve been thinking that dreams are bad because they might not come true, then you get your hopes up for nothing; or that we shouldn’t dream because earth is not our home so it’s a waste of time, especially when we know that we have no less days than when we first started. But that’s not what God wants from us. He wants us to have dreams of forwarding His kingdom here on earth, of touching lives by the way we live, and of bringing hope to the hopeless.

Joseph resisted falling into bondage with this spirit of Egypt because he knew that God had a divine purpose for his life, through slavery, false accusations and prison, Joseph survived by understanding who he was in God. Do you think daily about who you are in God? Do you dream of the days to come? Do you need more hope for a brighter future? I do… it’s time to move on from thinking mundanely about life, and sit complacently waiting for the next trials in life, this is a time to dream big J